Two Weeks - Three Years - In the Blink of an Eye
by daviderl31
Summary: At the end of Season Two, Eli had just two weeks to repair the stasis pod. But it proved harder than he expected. Then he had a brilliant idea to replenish Destiny's reserve power, giving him the extra needed time. But he knows that one small mistake, one misplaced decimal point, can be a matter of life or death for everyone. So who can he trust to verify his calculations?
1. Eli

**Two Weeks; Three Years; In the Blink of an Eye**

**Chapter One**

**Eli**

Eli stared out from the observation deck, never tiring of the colorful, almost magical, display caused by Destiny's FLT journey. The stars turned into streaks as the ship traveled past them on its way toward the void between the galaxy it was about to leave, and to the next one almost three years away.

How long he sat there he didn't know, and didn't care, but eventually he got up from the padded bench and slowly walked back to the section of the ship where the stasis pods were, and before he realized it he was standing in front of the one that held his beloved Chloe. After a few seconds he put his hand on the glass covering the front of it, wishing he could caress her cheek, feel the softness of her hair, the warmth of her skin.

After a deep breath, he knew he should look at the one pod that wasn't working, the one he had to repair before the two-week deadline ran out. But he wasn't worried, he could fix it. And for once, letting his ego inflate, he admitted to himself that he was smarter than Dr. Rush, smarter than Dr. Volker, smarter than Brody, smarter than all of them!

But for some reason, he found it hard to do anything but try the controls again, not expecting them to respond. So after a few minutes he left and made his way back to the dining hall, one of the few places that wasn't shut down to conserve power. He got the rest of the "stew," for lack of a better word, from the refrigerator, then shut it off as well every little bit helped. From now on, he would open the canned food, heat it up and eat all of it at once. He then went back to his quarters to sleep. He would start on the damaged pod when he woke up.

When he did, Eli had no idea how long he slept, or what time it was. And it didn't really matter. With no sunrise and no sunset, it just didn't seem important anymore. After another meal, he went back to the stasis pod and began to run a diagnostic on it, trying to discover if it didn't work because of damaged wiring, or some other easy repair; or if it was a not-so-easy fix - more damage that was visible, or some other problem, just as elusive. After what seemed like hours, he decided to take a break and went back to the observation deck.

"Well," he said out loud, as he noticed the streaks that were the passing stars seemed to be fewer than before, "it looks like we're getting to the edge of the galaxy."

As he mused, he was thinking back to when Col. Young informed everyone about having to go into the stasis pods for the three years it would take to reach the next galaxy. Eli was surprised that there weren't objections from more of them. Many were worried, and rightly so, that they might never wake up, that Destiny would become so low on power before they arrived, that it would drop out of FTL, and then they would just drift in space until the ship eventually lost all power and they would die.

Even Eli wondered if Destiny could maintain such a grueling, nonstop run on the engines, but as the colonel had pointed out, they had no choice. It was either go into the pods, or end up being destroyed by the drones as they attempted to gate down to a planet to replenish their meager supplies.

Several "days" went by but the pod stubbornly refused to be repaired. It seemed that no matter what Eli did, something else seemed to go wrong. It was as if he were trying to repair a house of cards - when one card was gently replaced, one or two others would fall. Although he sometimes worked, from his own estimations, for hours and hours, his frustrations only grew.

"If I only had more time!" he often found himself complaining. "I know I could get this damned thing fixed. But two weeks? What was I thinking?"

After his latest failure, he once again found himself looking out at the oncoming stars, but they weren't there - the ship had finally left the galaxy and was now traveling through empty space; there was certainly nowhere to stop for supplies now.

But slowly Eli was making progress - a time or two he actually had the stasis pod come online for almost a half a minute before it darkened again. He was getting closer - just a little more time, maybe a few more days would do it; a few more days that he was running out of.

And again he found himself on the observation deck staring at the now almost non-existent colors, there only because of the very few bits of matter and energy the ship was passing. But was he seeing right? Was that a single, solitary streak he saw go by? It had to have been a rogue star, somehow thrown from the galaxy and drifting on its own.

"Oh my god!" Eli exclaimed as he realized what that meant. If he could get Destiny to go through it to replenish the power supply, he would have all the time he would need to repair the stasis chamber!

Eli hurriedly began to work on the calculations - he would have to drop the ship out of FTL, turn the ship back in the direction of the star, put the ship back into FLT, and then drop out again exactly at the right moment to arrive at the star.

But as he began to work on the exceedingly complex equations, he began to doubt, and then to second guess himself. He wished over and over he had the computer he had on earth, the one he built himself, with a three terabyte hard drive and 5 gigabytes of RAM.

"What if I make a mistake?" he asked himself. "One small error, one thousandth of one percent off and Destiny wouldn't have the power needed to reach the next galaxy. I could be killing everyone and I'd be the only one to know it."

He went over his figures time and again, hoping they were right, thinking they were right, but still with that small nagging feeling that there was something he hadn't calculated correctly. If only someone was there to go over his figures; someone intelligent enough, smart enough, to verify everything was right, or to point out a vital, potentially lethal flaw.

Eli thought about the communication stones: Dr. McKay would be the perfect candidate. Eli had to admit that Rodney McKay was one of the few people smarter than he was. But no one would be manning the stones for three years. Rush was out of the question; Eli just didn't trust him. And he knew Volker and Brody weren't up to it.

So, that just left the one person Eli felt he could count on to check and double check, even triple check, his calculations - Chloe Armstrong.

**To Be Continued**


	2. Chloe

**Two Weeks; Three Years; In the Blink of an Eye**

**Chapter Two**

**Chloe**

Eli stood at the controls to release Chloe from her stasis chamber, wanting desperately to awaken her, but at the same time, fearful that if things didn't go the way they wanted, he would be sentencing her to death, her and everyone else. He could face it, barely, but he just couldn't do that to the woman he loved - having her know that going back into the pod, there was the almost definite possibility she would never wake up again.

But at the same time, what if she was the one to save them all?

Time was growing short. He had to make a decision - forget about it and try to repair the final pod in the short time that was left. Or trust his calculations were correct and head back to the star. Or bring Chloe out of stasis and hope, and pray, it was the right thing to do. In frustration, Eli turned, took three steps toward the bridge, then turned back and hit the controls that awakened her before he could change his mind again.

As the door slid up, Eli could see the confusion on her face. To her, she had just stepped into the chamber but a heartbeat ago.

Seeing Eli, she asked, "Has it been three years already?" Then realizing he was the only one there, she continued, a worried look on her face and in her voice. "What's wrong? Why am I the only one awake?"

She then began to panic - something wasn't right!

"It's all right," he answered, trying to keep her from losing control. "Everything's fine. Trust me, it's great!"

But it wasn't working.

"What the hell's happening, Eli? Tell me!"

"Okay. Look I have an idea, a good one, that ..." Eli was having trouble getting out what he needed her to know to allay her fears. He started again, taking a deep breath. "Okay, I'm having more trouble that I thought I would have trying to fix the broken pod."

"And you need ME to help you? What about Dr. Rush? I'm sure he... "

"No. You don't understand. Just let me finish, please. I need more time... "

"How long has it been? How long have I been asleep?"

"Um, not sure, nine, maybe ten days."

"But I thought two weeks was the limit."

"It is, but if my idea works, I'll have plenty of time to fix it. Just don't interrupt, okay? Let me tell you."

Chloe nodded, but crossed her arms over her chest, letting him know it had better be good!

"Okay. Like I said, time is running out on me. We are out of the galaxy, but Destiny passed a single star way out here. And I was thinking that if we were able to go back to it, we could dip down into it and replenish Destiny's reserve power, and then not only would I have enough time to repair the chamber, but there would be enough power left over that when we got to wherever it is we end up, there won't be the mad scramble to find the right star. But I need you to look over my calculations. I keep looking at them and I know they're right, but what if they aren't?"

"And you don't think Dr. Rush would be a better choice than me?"

"No, I don't. There's just something about him I just don't trust. And besides, you solved calculations he couldn't, a couple of times. Who else is here?"

"You're putting an awful lot of pressure on me. Do you think that's fair?"

"No. It isn't fair, Chloe. This whole - Destiny thing isn't fair, to any of us. But you're the only one I trust."

Chloe took a deep, troubled breath, closed her eyes for a second, opened them, and said, "I suppose it wouldn't hurt to look at them."

With a big grin, Eli brought out the six pages, filled on both sides with equations and calculations. Chloe shook her head and began to go over them line by line.

"How about we go to the observation deck?" she suggested after a few minutes. "This may take a while."

"Okay, but be ready for a surprise things look different now that we're in deep, deep space."

After her initial shock of seeing no passing stars and no colors, she sat on one of the benches to begin again. But Eli was hovering, distracting her.

"Do you think you could get me some water or something, and maybe something to snack on?"

"Sure," he replied happily. "Be back in a jiff."

"Take your time," she said to his disappearing back.

After bringing her the requested food and drink, Eli returned to the stasis chamber needing repair, something to keep him busy. He had realized she needed time alone, with nothing to sidetrack her. After an hour of basically doing nothing useful, he couldn't stand it anymore and went to see how she was coming.

She looked up at him when he came back in, then went back to her reading. He saw that she was nearing the end of the last page, so he waited patiently, looking out at the empty void until she spoke to him.

"Well, I don't see anything really wrong. These calculations are, well, they're perfect. But there is one thing."

"What?" Pride in what he had done suddenly turned to panic.

"According to what you've done, if we're going to do this, we should have dropped out of FTL about four hours ago."

"What? No! Are you sure?"

"I think so. Look here." Chloe turned the next to last page and pointed out the figures on the bottom half of the page.

"Of course! How stupid of me!" he chastised himself. "Now everything has to be refigured. It will take days! Days we don't have."

"No it won't," Chloe argued. "Do you have something to write with?"

From somewhere Eli produced a pencil.

"Okay," she said as she returned to the first page and carefully circled several lines of equations in three different places. "All we have to do is rework these figures to correspond with these." And she then went to the last page and again circled a block of equations half a page long.

Eli looked at the first page, went to the last page, and back again, twice.

"You're right," he agreed. "My god, you're a genius!" He started laughing. "This will work! We can do this!"

"Okay," Chloe said as she joined in laughing with him. "It won't take me that long to rework these, so why don't you go back to the bridge and drop us back into normal space, and then turn the ship around?"

"I'm ON IT!" he exclaimed as he all but ran out of the observation deck back to the bridge.

**To Be Continued**


	3. In the Blink of an Eye

**Chapter Three**

**In the Blink of an Eye**

As Chloe began to recalculate the all-important equations, she felt strangely fulfilled and useful, as if she finally was more than just a pretty face. A pretty face that, without wanting to, had caused them all so much trouble, what with being abducted by aliens and needed to be rescued. And Destiny being chased by them, just to get her back with the knowledge she had unwittingly gleaned for them. But now she was actually being productive, and possibly was saving the ship and everyone on board from an uncertain death.

Eli, too, felt buoyed by her. Not only because she was with him with no chance of them being interrupted by Lt. Scott, by her lover, but she had provided the important solution to the puzzle he had worried so much about. Provided and improved upon.

Now he only needed the pages to begin to feed the data into Destiny to make it happen, and just after he started back to the observation deck to get them, he heard Chloe yelling for him to come, and to come quickly! He began to run, and the closer he got, the brighter the passageway became. And when he finally got there, the entire deck was almost too bright to look at.

"Isn't it magnificent!" Chloe exclaimed. "It's - spectacular!"

And Eli had to agree. When Eli turned Destiny around to the direction they had come, they were now looking down on the galaxy about 40 degrees from the vertical, and it was filling the entire sky. But they were not so far away that a few hundred individual stars were still visible, but still far enough that its spiral shape was most evident.

After several minutes of just staring at it, Chloe whispered, as if she were in church, "Where's the one we want?"

Eli shook his head. "It's lost in the brightness of the galaxy. But it's in Destiny's logs. Once the figures are programmed in, she should drop into normal space close enough to it."

"Then shouldn't we put them in?" she asked. "Before we travel too far and have to refigure everything all over again?"

"That's not a problem. Compared to FTL, we're barely moving. But I guess the sooner we get started, the sooner we'll be there."

Neither wanted to leave the stunning sight, and before she would, Chloe insisted Eli have one of the Kenos record it until they went to FTL.

In less than thirty minutes all calculations had been entered into Destiny's computer, and Eli let Chloe do the honors and send them back into faster than light speed toward the star. They had about ten hours to wait - the length of time it took Eli to finish his calculations and then get the courage to awaken Chloe. They grabbed some food and returned to the observation deck to wait out the time.

Both dozed off, and both woke up immediately when the ship dropped into normal space. The desired star was close enough and large enough to tell them they were there. The galaxy was even larger and its overall spiral structure was not as evident.

Again they returned to the bridge and Eli began to guide the ship closer and closer, and finally into the outer layers of the star. He lowered the collection pods as he sent Destiny lower still, keeping a careful watch on the hull temperature, still wary, still uncertain the shields would hold, protecting them from the deadly heat and radiation.

"This isn't exactly the kind of star Destiny would choose," he explained to Chloe. "But it's not nearly as hot as the blue giant we went through before."

While he was watching the several other essential readings - speed, angle of attack, and depth, he had Chloe keep an eye on the critical one that indicated Destiny's energy reserves, and just how much they were "charging up." Too much and they would overload, like overcharging a common flashlight battery until it exploded. He had overridden the ship's ability to automatically retract the pods when there was enough in the reserves. He wanted every last little bit of energy it was possible to get.

"I think we're there," she finally said. And Eli immediately retracted the pods, trusting that Chloe knew what she was looking at. And after driving the ship out of the star, he then reactivate the FTL drive and once again Destiny was on her way, the energy reserves as full as possible.

After several moments, the realization set in.

"We did it," Eli said quietly, then shouted, "WE DID IT!" And he began to laugh. "We actually DID IT!"

And in the moment of jubilation, Chloe ran over and threw her arms around his neck as his arms went around her waist, and he spun them around and around as they both laughed and yelled out in pure joy. But as they stopped spinning, Eli became very aware that the woman he loved was in his arms, and without thinking, he kissed her on the mouth, and for a second, he thought that she kissed him back. But then they broke the kiss when he realized what he had done.

"Oh, god! Chloe, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean..."

"No. Eli, it's okay, really. It was - a nice kiss. It's okay."

"No. It's not okay. I know you and Matt "

"Eli, stop. Don't you think that there were times when you were the only one there for me, caring for me, like when I was shot in the leg, that I didn't wonder what it would be like for you to kiss me? I did wonder."

But at the same time she backed away enough that they were no longer touching, letting him know it was only a one-time thing. Then she continued. "Eli, we did something truly amazing, why wouldn't our emotions run a little wild?"

Still embarrassed, Eli agreed with her. "So, I guess it's back to the stasis chamber, huh? I'll let you get back to sleep, and I'll start working on that last pod."

"You know, now that we have extra resources, maybe I could help, somehow. If you'd like."

"Sure. A second pair of eyes, and hands, and certainly a second brain, might just be what I need."

Together, they began to work on the troublesome pod; working, testing, running diagnostics, reworking, retesting, for almost three days. Then they got the point where the pod would work for a few minutes, then power down. And then for almost an hour before it failed. And then it lasted for a full day, with no signs of failure.

"So tell me," Chloe said as they were eating one of their last meals, "Did TJ show Corporal Barnes the Keno recording of the other Barnes having your baby?"

"Oh yes. She showed every woman on the ship whose counterpart on Novus had a baby, having a baby."

"Were you there when she saw it?"

"I was. And it was embarrassing, for both of us."

"So, what do you think of her? Do you like her?"

"I don't really know her, other than to smile and nod in passing. But after her seeing the Keno, even that stopped."

"Well, when we get to where we're going you could, you know, start smiling again. Say hello. Be friendly."

"I suppose I could."

"But don't push it. Just let it happen. Who knows, maybe she'll come to you."

"Maybe."

After a short awkward pause, Eli said, "You know, I was kind of surprised that the other Camille didn't have a kid, or kids."

"You do know she likes girls, don't you?"

"Well, of course I know. But considering how few people there were, you'd've thought she would have volunteered to add to the gene pool."

"Maybe she tried but couldn't have children."

"Maybe, I suppose."

And then it was time. Eli escorted Chloe to her pod, and as she stepped in and turned around to face him, he said, "Guess I'll see you in thr... "

"The blink of an eye?" she interrupted.

"Exactly," he agreed, and gave her a warm smile and a little wave as the door slid down, and then he activated the controls that put her to sleep.

He next set the controls for his pod to activate ten seconds after he stepped in. The door slid down, and in the last second before he was put into stasis, his last thought was of - Corporal Barnes.

**To Be Continued...**

**...In Three Years**


End file.
